Some parents are trapezes, spurring you to great heights of virtuosity. Others are safety nets, assuring you of a safe landing when you attempt those stratospheric leaps. My father had to catch me several times, often literally.
When I bit off my tongue crashing through some glass shelves aged 2, there was no panic. He just whisked me off to the emergency room and had me focus on the week-long ice-cream diet to follow while I was stitched back together. A few years later, I found myself marooned on the awning of Aunty Pressy’s bakery on Main Street in Poona. I had clambered out of a window to retrieve a coin I had dropped and was unable to climb back up or make the leap to the pavement below. Dad’s calm assurance that he would catch me allowed me to jump into his arms, certain that I would not hit the ground. He often blamed his hernia on having to lift my considerable deadweight each time I fell out of bed without ever waking up, a somewhat frequent occurrence. On the occasions when I did wake from a nightmare, he’d patiently inspect the dark spaces behind each curtain and under my bed to prove to me there was no bogeyman around, before either he or I could return to sleep.
A friend once accused me of being a ‘daddy’s girl’. She went on to explain that this type has an air of entitlement, expecting the world to pay them attention and appreciate them. If true, that’s certainly a gift I received from my father. His belief that I could do just about anything meant that I believed it too, whether the challenge involved cracking a crossword, fixing an appliance, riding a horse, pursuing any profession I fancied, and prevailing, not just surviving, in any circumstance life threw my way. Not despite being a girl but because girls, like boys, could do and be anything they chose.
Another legacy from my father is the joy of words. That includes omnivorous tastes in reading, an elephantine memory, punctiliousness in spelling, precision in choice of words, and the inventiveness to spin tales unfettered by constraints of mundane reality. As children, we spent many afternoons transfixed by stories of his childhood as the third of nine children living a dizzy life swapping cities, schools and myriad social activities in colonial times. The Five Find-Outers and the Secret Seven pale by comparison with the adventures he and his siblings embarked upon. Again, it was thanks to him that I always had access to enough books to satisfy even my voracious reading habit.
Dad was acquainted with people from every walk of life. Seemingly endless streams came through our doors seeking advice, recommendations, assistance or just conversation. As a journalist he hobnobbed with politicians and police personnel, sportspersons and celebrities. As a dedicated member of various associations he paid his dues to his profession, including traveling the country to play cricket matches for the Sports Journalists Association of Bombay. His volunteer work, including a lifetime of service to the Catholic church and the Lions’ Club, brought him in touch with folk ranging from Gandhi, Mother Teresa and two Popes to unemployed workers, people with disabilities and children seeking access to schools, colleges and hospitals. It was only at his funeral that I fathomed the extent of his impact by the large crowd that filled the cathedral and all the space outside it, each with their own story of how he had transformed their life or helped them tide over some crisis.
Those values of equity, justice, compassion, fraternity and dignity that transcended age, gender, class, creed, race and caste were deeply ingrained in every aspect of his life. As someone who had witnessed first hand India’s freedom struggle, the Emergency at close quarters, and the machinations of the powerful in business, politics, sports and the media, his perspectives on history and humankind helped us build world-views of great scale and principle. Yet he wore his knowledge and influence lightly. Our learning from him came not via advice or admonition but through lived example, always leavened by humour and laughter.
Paradoxically, for someone who made his living through words, he spoke very few. An oasis of serenity in a noisy, chaotic world, he could cut through the clutter and sum up a situation, expressing his thoughts in just a few quiet syllables. From him I learned that it’s the strength of one’s argument not the volume at which it is conveyed that is most effective. That while it’s important to observe widely and deeply, most happenings in life don’t merit response. That health and a sound night’s sleep trump fame and wealth. That no belief, however deeply held, is beyond question. And that reason must always prevail over authority even when presented by a child to an adult.
My gratitude to my father is limitless. He has been, and continues to be, my anchor, my beacon, my compass and guide. It’s fitting that I end this 100th birth anniversary tribute with these words by Kipling, a fellow journalist who was born and lived around the block from Dad’s school. Few people have embodied them better.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Thanks, Dad!
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